Simon Callan

A few Saturdays back, I got mugged by Susan while walking through Victoria station. Metaphorically speaking, she grabbed me by the neck, and slammed me up against the wall. This was triggered by the usual things - the sight of several women in the sort of clothes that I want to wear. This seems to happen quite a lot there.

I know what she wants. To be normal. To go out, to get out, to buy new shoes and a dress, and to spend the night out on the town, dancing and drinking and having fun. To live, not just the high life, but the ordinary life. All the things I don't do.

The problem is, she's expensive. Not really in money, but in time. She can't come out at home, which means that I have to do things like arrange places to change, and getting stuff there, and planning in advance. This means that she cannot do small or spontaneous things, but only planned stuff.

Can I reduce the fixed costs of Susan? How do I reduce the fixed costs of Susan?

Places that Susan can come out to play:

* Home. Not really worth it. While the family know, they've never seen Susan, and it's probably a bad idea to introduce her at this late a stage. Also, what's the point? All the fun is in being out and about.

* Work. Not the best idea. Actually, I might get away with this - one of the big bosses is more than cool about it, but I'm not sure how the rest of work would react :)

* Conventions. The DiscWorld convention is coming up in August, and I'm pretty sure that Susan will spend some time there, but I'm not sure that it's soon enough to save me from injury. Unfortunately, this clashes with 9 worlds Geek Fest, which would also have been a very good place to go.

* London. There is quite a lot of stuff that she could do in London, some TG / gay related, and some normal stuff. One obvious thing is the Sunday Assembly, having been preceded by theatre and disco.

* Brighton. Pretty stereotypical, and I'm not sure that there is really enough to keep us going for the weekend.

* Elsewhere?

A few more of my drawings

Yesterday, I had this idea for a little cultural "thing", that might work quite well in the more bohemian areas of London. I call it "The Drawing Room".

It's a rather literal name, as it's basically a room, with good natural light, where you can go, just to sit down and draw stuff, while around other people who just want to draw. To spice it up a bit, there would be a couple of object on display, so people could have something to draw. These would be changed on a daily basis, so there would always be something new to draw. The object could vary between a vase, a statue, a piece on clothing on a mannequin, etc,

This could be run by one of the London museums, or somewhere similar. If they stuck it by the coffee shop, and had art materials on sale (sponsored by one of the art shops?), it might even turn out to be reasonably profitable. Alternatively a coffe shop / cafe could run this a few times a month,  as a semi-social event. There is something called Dr Sketchy ( http://www.drsketchylondon.co.uk/) , but I get the feeling that that is more hardcore rather than a drop in / social scene thing.

I have finally gotten the point to where I am going to have to look for a new job. This one is getting so frustrating - nothing new, I'm not learning new stuff, and the commute is *so* bad that I'm tempted to buy a car or a motorbike just to get avoid the multiple trains journeys involved. It's also got to the point where I'm considering strangling all three of my cow-orkers. The big boss is currently on holiday, so he gets to survive.

The only question is what to do? Well, the first thing is obvious, find a new job, but what sort of a job? I'm pretty much struck with software engineering, it's about all the skills I have, and, most of the time, I enjoy it.

I think I should ignore my current skill set when choosing what I want, as I'm egotistical enough to think I can learn anything I need to learn, but what do I want?
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I've just spent the last weekend at the bi-annual disc world convention. As a last minute decision, I decided that I would spend the evenings there as Susan. As the decision was made about a week before the event, this naturally led to a rash of panic buying, as I went hunting for the perfect dresses. As I couldn't find anything suitable in the high street, I eventually ordered far too much from Asos and their curve collection.

Packing for the event was interesting - I ended up taking three bags with me - half a bag of electronics, half a bag of clothes for Simon, and two large bags full of clothes and other stuff for Susan.

The convention itself was fun and while at 6 foot plus in heels, I have absolutely no chance in passing, there was not a single problem over the weekend. This wasn't really a surprise, as the people running it are some of the most socially aware, pro-active and cuddly but scary when annoyed people around.

In the evenings, there are a few programme events, but it is most social, sitting around drinking and talking. These were a lot more fun than usual - I think it helped that every night I was getting compliments on my dresses, my ability to walk in heels and one night, on my hair, which had just been slightly styled to fall over one eye, ala Jessica Rabbit.

The evenings are where things get slightly ... odd. Normally, I'm the very quiet, introverted type who finds it almost impossible to talk to strangers. Susan is different. Susan will sit down next to total strangers, and start talking to them. Susan will take part in the silly games that people are playing. Susan will take part in a burlesque dance class, when Simon would look at the gender ratio and run, and just note that next time she needs to glue her tits in place. Hell, even her posture is different, Simon tends to hunch a bit, and look down, while Susan seems to walk taller and look out, rather than down, though this may simply be a side effect of the bra straps pulling.

I think the biggest thing is that Susan seems approachable and responsive to being approached, whereas Simon is more closed in, and *scared* of talking to people.

[[ Am I the only person confused here about names? There currently appears to be three people in my mind, myself, Simon and Susan, who manage to all be the same person, while at the same time Simon and Susan are masks that I show to the world. ]]

Given how successful things were at the convention, the question is what next? I like Susan, I like being Susan, and other people seem to like Susan.

Today's interview at Info Share was ... interesting. I managed to break their recruitment process.

Because I did so well on the python test they gave me (95%, the highest they'd seen), they decided to change what they were recruiting for. They had been looking for a straight C++ developer. Instead they decided to consider me for a mixed test developer / C++ developer role, to spend a few months re-working their (python based) test infrastructure, and then moving to a straight C++ developer when I get it all sorted out.
This wouldn't be a tester role - if nothing else, I'm too expensive for this.
I think I'm capable of doing what they want, and it sounds like it could be an interesting position for the months I would be doing it.

I've been clearing out the fun side of my wardrobe a bit, and I've thrown out about half of it, because I either don't like it, it doesn't flatter me properly or it just doesn't fit.
I now have 12 blouses and tops and 8 pairs of shoes (stiletto's, wedges and kitten heels), but only 2 skirts! I think I'm going to have to go shopping at some point.

Dave contemplated death. Most people only contemplate death when they, or someone they know, is about to die. All of the people that Dave knew and cared about were in perfect health, and seemed likely to live for many more years. As such, Dave was only worried about his own death. What annoyed Dave the most was that this was the fifth time this week he had been forced to contemplate his death.

In most weeks, he only had to contemplate it at most once, and in the lucky times, he only had to contemplate his death on a monthly basis. When Dave had taken the job at the storage company, he had expected it to be a relatively safe position. Okay, they had been looking for an Igor, but apart from that it had looked quite harmless. Dave should have known better.

For most people, when they consider their own death, they usually consider either how they are going to die, or if there is a heaven for them to go to after death. In Dave's case, he was contemplating the mess that he would have to clean up after his death. From the looks of it, his death was about to be a particularly messy one, and he was expecting his boss to complain about the state that it would leave the office in.

Dave stared down the huge barrel of the gun. As always, looking at a gun from this angle made the barrel look absolutely enormous. "This isn't going to help," said Dave, "you're only going to cause a mess, and that will make me very annoyed."

The person on the other end of the barrel said "Why should I be bothered about you being annoyed? You'll be dead, and any annoyance you are suffering from, will be the problem of the receiving angels."

"A number of people have expressed similar sentiments.", said Dave. "As you can see, I am still around to be annoyed by people making those comments, and most of them are dead. Okay, they have often manage to kill me, but as you can see, that rarely sticks."